Thursday Poem - Chains of Fire

Each dawn, kneeling before my hearth,
Placing stick, crossing stick
On dry eucalyptus bark
Now the larger boughs, the log
(With thanks to the tree for its life)
Touching the match, waiting for creeping flame.
I know myself linked by chains of fire
To every woman who has kept a hearth.

In the resinous smoke
I smell hut and castle and cave,
Mansion and hovel.
See in the shifting flame my mother
And grandmothers out over the world
Time through, back to the Paleolithic
In rock shelters where flint struck first sparks
(Sparks aeons later alive on my hearth)
I see mothers , grandmothers back to beginnings,
Huddled beside holes in the earth
of igloo, tipi, cabin,
Guarding the magic no other being has learned,
Awed, reverent, before the sacred fire
Sharing live coals with the tribe.

For no one owns or can own fire,
it lends itself.
Every hearth-keeper has known this.
Hearth-less, lighting one candle in the dark
We know it today.
Fire lends itself,
Serving our life
Serving fire.

At Winter solstice, kindling new fire
With sparks of the old
From black coals of the old,

Seeing them glow again,

Shuddering with the mystery,

We know the terror of rebirth.

Elsa Gidlow

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Rattle and Hum

It is still dark outside, and through the window comes the clatter of the wind skating across the roof with its freight of frozen twigs, the sound of small icicles crashing in shards on the deck, trees in the garden shaking their snow garments loose in a long slow dance. Light snow is falling, but the descending white stuff makes no sound, at least from in here. In the kitchen, there is the burble and hiss of the De'Longhi coffee machine, the rattle and hum of the old refrigerator in the corner.

By rights, there should be the sound of the toaster too, but it will be a while until I can even think about toast or waffles This is "bang up" weather for migraines, and I have awakened with one. I thought about doing prescription meds when I opened my eyes but have opted for a beaker of industrial strength espresso instead. Just holding it and breathing in its scent is comforting.

The stuff in my cup is as black as night and has the consistency of solid propellant rocket fuel. It could be dispatched with a fork. Steam rises in arty curls from the inky lagoon, and a splendid creamy froth floats on the surface. The fragrance of the freshly ground Logdriver Espresso from Bridgehead is ambrosial and so are the glossy beans in their canister. Headache or no, I consider drawing pictures in the foam.

Why is it my thoughts always turn to Paris when the weather is like this? With beaker in hand, I look through my collection of Cavallini rubber stamps, vintage postcards, stickers and notebooks - the little ones with maps of France, fleurs-de-lis, French postage stamps, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre museum, Notre-Dame Cathedral or the Eiffel Tower gracing their covers.

When the migraine has expired in my espresso sea, I will curl up in a corner and read something in French, perhaps the latest Fred Vargas. Yup, I can do this.

Advent Sun Wheel Wreath (Week 3)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Tonight, I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of the stars in the sky, watched the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and the immensity above them.

It's winter and there is smoke from the fires. The square, lighted windows of houses are fogging over. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

Grilled, Roasted, Riced

As reluctant as I am to admit such things, I have been feeling rather down since the anniversary of Irv's passing last week, and there have been troubling developments in "big life stuff" to cope with too. The holidays will be quiet this year.

The best thing to do at such times is to stay busy, and I have been distracting myself with projects like burrowing into the pantry and tossing over-the-hill condiments, tidying closets, shelves and cupboards etc. How many jars of minced ginger does one really need, and more importantly, how many does she have room for? 

All the toing and froing has not done much for my appetite though, and it was time to do something about that state of affairs last night. The treatment for the malaise was grilled tilapia, lovingly anointed with a soupçon of butter and Meyer lemon, plated with a small heap of savoury rice, and a few lightly roasted vegetables. Meyer lemons are just beginning to appear in local markets, and the little golden wonders are one of the things I love best about this time of the year (along with Moroccan clementines, blood oranges, persimmons, cranberries and pomegranates).

In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no blood sugar issues, and I would be turning out enough macarons, mille-feuilles, chocolatines and profiteroles to stuff a bakery, but that is not in the cards. One has to draw a line somewhere. Did I mention croissants? There would certainly be croissants. A good cup of coffee and a fine French pastry are two of life's most exquisite pleasures. 

Prodding the tilapia last night, stirring the basmati rice and poking the veggies with an old wooden spoon was a treat, and the kitchen smelled wonderful while I was doing it. Culinary exercises are the best kind of mojo, and I must remember that.

I don't plan to start taking photos of my efforts in the kitchen and posting them here, but last night's exercise lifted my spirits, and it made my heart glad. Yum.

Friday Ramble - Qarrtsiluni Days

There is always so much toing and froing this month, cards and postcards, home baking, wrapped gifts, tissue paper and ribbons, Christmas trees and decorations, holiday outings with friends. How does one do it all when the light in December is scant, and many tasks must be undertaken in darkness?

I think of these days before Yule as being qarrtsiluni days. That lovely Inuit word with its bewildering arrangement of consonants means "sitting together in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to happen", and that is how these darkling intervals at the end of the calendar year feel to me.

Qarrtsiluni is a northern thing. Before a hunt, Inuit hunters gather quietly indoors and sit silently in the darkness, no lanterns or other sources of light. They wait for inspiration, for a song to come to them that honors the spirit of the whale and its gifts to the tribe. When the song comes into their collective conscious, they sing it together. For the most part, we are not indigenous whale hunters, but their rite is a beautiful way of honoring the fertile darkness that enfolds us at this time of the year, the stillness before something luminous and uplifting comes into being. 

The word was also the name of an excellent literary journal published online from 2005 to 2013. The magazine curated a vibrant literary community on the web where both gifted amateurs and professional writers could display their work, and I was sorry when it ceased publication. Its archive is still online.

There is something similar going on here (no whale hunt, thank Herself, and we definitely don't want me singing). We hang out in the stygian gloom, try to stay warm, down endless mugs of hot stuff and wait for the light of the sun to shift, to slant back in our direction. Things are the other way around of course. It is earthlings who are in motion, not the dazzling star at the center of our universe.

Winter's fruitful darkness is a doorway through which we pass to ready ourselves for an exuberant blooming somewhere up the trail. Beyond our nightfall turnings at the postern of the old calendar year, light, warmth and wonder await us.

Thursday Poem - Come to Dust

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body

that are to come, the motions

of the matter that held you.

Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.

Fall to the earth in the falling rain.

Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.

Mount slowly in the rising sap

to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.

Come down to earth as leaves in autumn

to lie in the patient rot of winter.

Rise again in spring’s green fountains.

Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen

to fall in blessing.

                       All earth’s dust

has been life, held soul, is holy.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Wordless Wednesday - In Hampton Park

Frost and Morning Field

Early December days in this corner of the world are all too short, and they are cold. The wind is icy on our old bones, and they protest their ordeal.

One is grateful for small things in the dark days of the year.  The frozen grass is crunchy underfoot, and the frosted trees on the edge of the field are skeletal, but oh, the morning light. Everything sings and dances. Everything sparkles.

The Solstice is only a few weeks away, and thank the Old Wild Mother, daylight will return after that, little by little. We (Beau and I) reckon we can do this darkling stuff, and by golly, we will. There will be creaking and grumbling until then, but we will drink in the scant light of these dusky days as if it is a fine French brandy.

When December 21 arrives, we will be jubilant, and we will be downright silly. We will lurch about in wobbly gladness and try not to fall over.

Advent Sun Wheel Wreath (Week 2)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you put the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you're dead.

Tom Stoppard, from The Real Thing
July 3, 1937 - November 29, 2025

November Woods

Friday Ramble - All Together

The day after tomorrow (Sunday) is the anniversary of my husband's passing from pancreatic cancer. Irv took his last breath at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2019 as I held him, and it feels like only yesterday that he left us and went on ahead.

To say that life without my soulmate has been painful is understating things and then some. There are no adequate words for the situation. I loved the man more than life itself, and it is still difficult to wrap my mind around the notion of years of life without him. Flourishing is not in the cards. Just surviving is hard work.

For many years, I was married to a guy with a razor-sharp mind, a dry wit, a fine sense of irony and a great laugh. The natural world was an endless source of delight to him, and he never wearied of its grandeur and its beauty. He was passionate about trees, rocks and rivers, fields and fens, birds, bugs and woodland critters, sunrises and sunsets, full moons and starry nights. 

He loved his tribe unconditionally. He loved this planet fiercely, and he loved rambling its wild places. Ramble we did by golly, hand in hand and all over the place, packs on our backs, notebooks in our pockets, binoculars around our necks and our doggy sidekicks trotting along with us. I could not have had a more wonderful companion if I had written him into being myself, and I simply could not believe my good fortune. I look back on our life together with amazement and gratitude.

Now it is Beau and I who wander through the great wide world together, in the flesh anyway. Cassie and Spencer, traveled beyond the fields we know long ago, but they are right here with Irv, and all three are walking along in the woods with Beau and I. There will be five of us on the snowbound trail this winter, but some of us will not need parkas and snowshoes or leave paw prints in the white stuff.

There is comfort in knowing that we will walk these hills together, forever. A fine untrammeled wildness dwells in our blood and bones, all of us.

Thursday Poem - Thanksgiving

I have been trying to read
the script cut in these hills—
a language carved in the shimmer of stubble
and the solid lines of soil, spoken
in the thud of apples falling
and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak
as they gather in the fallen grain,
the blackbirds sing it
over their shoulders in parting,
and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript
where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue
I believe it might sound like a lullaby
or the simplest grace at table.
Across the gathering stillness
simply this: “For all that we have received,
dear God, make us truly grateful.”

 Lynn Ungar from Blessing the Bread

Wordless Wednesday - Dancing for Breakfast

At the Bend in the Creek

We have rung every possible seasonal weather change in recent days, the pendulum oscillating from snow and bitter cold to rain and above zero temperatures. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth we go. 

What to do? A walk on an overcast day is the ticket, dressing warmly and keeping to the area around the creek sheltered by tall old trees. The temperature hovers around zero, but there is a bitter north wind, and our fingers and toes tingle as we (Beau and I) potter along. There are footprints in the snow along the creek's verges, the tracks of birds and field mice, cottontail rabbits, now and then a raccoon. This morning, there are also the prints of a weasel (or ermine as it is known in winter when its fur turns white). Not surprising as the little creature is a fierce and very proficient mouser.

A few days ago, the little waterway was starting to open again, but it was cold overnight, and the channel has iced up again except for an opening where the water flows a little faster. In that small and hopeful aperture, the icy water sparkles, holding clouds and light and whiskery branches. It sings blithely of light returning, and it counsels patience. It reminds me that we are flowing too, even when we seem to be standing still or frozen in place. Under my parka, boots and woolly hat, there beats an ebullient heart. Little rivers run through me, singing as they go.

Advent Sun Wheel Wreath (Week 1)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

You really don't have to lose everything and travel to a remote valley to discover that the world is always rushing forward to teach us, and that the greatest thing we can do is stand there, open and available, and be taught by it. There is no limit to what this cracked and broken and achingly beautiful world can offer, and there is equally no limit to our ability to meet it.

Each day, the sun rises and we get out of bed. Another day has begun and bravely, almost recklessly, we stagger into it not knowing what it will bring to us. How will we meet this unpredictable, untamable human life? How will we answer its many questions and challenges and delights? What will we do when we find ourselves, stumble over ourselves, encounter ourselves, once again, in the kitchen?

Dana Velden, Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations

and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook

A Yuletide Reading List

This is a holiday tradition, my list of written materials about the winter holiday season and the return of the light to the north. Many of these books are out of print, but they can sometimes be found in used book shops, and they are often happy campers in your local library. May the works below be a light in your window, a red shawl around your shoulders, a pair of fuzzy socks, a mug of something hot and nourishing, a fire on your hearth conveying comfort, fellowship and festive spirit this holiday season.

No Yule interval would be complete without reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence. The five volumes are: Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. There is also John Masefield's Box of Delights, a childhood favorite, and at least four of my late friend Dolores Stewart Riccio's delightful Circle novels take place at (or near) Yule. I also read the late Phil Rickman's novel, December. He was a friend. 

 Christmas Folklore and Superstitions, 
A.R. Bane

The Oxford Book of Days,

Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Echoes of Magic: A Study of Seasonal Festivals through the Ages,

C.A. Burland

The Book of Christmas Folklore,
Tristram Potter Coffin

Lights of Winter: Winter Celebrations Around the World,

Heather Conrad and DeForest Walker

Medieval Holidays and Festivals: A Calendar

of Celebrations, Madeleine Pelner Cosman

Christmas and Christmas Lore, T.G. Crippen

The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World, for the Winter Solstice, 

Carolyn McVickar Edwards

Christmas, A Biography, Cynthia Flanders

The Magic of the Winter Solstice: Seasonal Celebrations to Honour

Nature's Ever-turning Wheel, 

Danu Forest

Yule: History, Lore and Celebration,

Anna Franklin 

A Calendar of Festivals: Traditional

Celebrations, Songs, Seasonal Recipes

and Things to Make, Marian Green

Winter Magic, Sarah Haydon 

The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals As Solar

Observatories, John L. Heilbron

Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth's

Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and

Ceremony, Richard Heinberg

Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual

Year in Britain, Britain, Ronald Hutton

The Winter Solstice, Ellen Jackson

The Dance of Time: The Origins of the Calendar, Michael Judge

 

The Solstice Evergreen: History, Folklore and Origins of the Christmas Tree,

Sheryl Karas

Perpetual Almanack of Folklore,

Charles Kightly

Sacred Celebrations: A Sourcebook,

Glennie Kindred

Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon Stars, and Planets,

E.C. Krupp

The Ancient Celtic Festivals: and How

We Celebrate Them Today,

Clare Walker Leslie and Frank E. Gerace

Celebrations Of Light : A Year of Holidays Around the World,

Nancy Luenn and Mark Bender

 Llewellyn's Little Book of Yule, Jason Mankey

The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions

Christmas, John Matthews and Caitlin Matthews

Rituals of Celebration: Honoring the Seasons of Life Through the Wheel of the Year,

Jane Meredith

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,

Clement A. Miles

The Hedgewitch Book of Days, Spells Rituals

and Recipes for the Magical Year,

Mandy Mitchell

Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth,

Dorothy Morrison

The Provenance Press Guide to the Wiccan

Year: A Year Round Guide to Spells, Rituals,

and Holiday Celebrations, Judy Ann Nock

The Modern Witchcraft Guide to the Wheel

of the Year: From Samhain to Yule, Your

Guide to the Wiccan Holidays,

Judy Ann Nock

Sacred Origins of Profound Things:

The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World's Religions,

Charles Panati

Yule: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Winter Solstice, Susan Pesznecker

The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice,

Wendy Pfeffer

Christmas Folklore, Cory Nelson and Kyle Pressly

Celebrating the Winter Solstice, Theresa Reel

The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice,

Wendy Pfeffer and Jesse Reisch

The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for

the Darkest Days of the Year, Linda Raedisch

Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at

the Origins of Yuletide, Christian Rätsch, Claudia

Müller-Ebeling

Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions In Norway and

the New Land, Kathleen Stokker

When Santa Was A Shaman: Ancient Origins of Santa

Claus and the Christmas Tree, Tony van Renterghem

How To Celebrate Winter Solstice, Teresa Villegas

The Fires of Yule: A Keltelven Guide for Celebrating

the Winter Solstice, Montague Whitsel

The Wicca Cookbook: Recipes, Ritual and Lore,

Jamie Wood

Friday Ramble - Calling the Sun Home

Herons, geese and loons have departed for balmier lodgings somewhere further south. Rivers and lakes in the eastern Ontario highlands are still and silent without their summer residents. Nights and early mornings are cold. Beau and I dress warmly when we go out because there is always an icy wind. Boreus, god of the north wind, is in residence, and he is making his blustery presence felt. 

On early morning rambles, fallen leaves crunch pleasingly under our feet, and we examine the frozen puddles along the trail for woodland snippets suspended in the ice. Near home, the north wind rattles the eaves of the little blue house in the village and sets the whiskery trees nearby in raspy motion.

When night falls, I pull draperies closed and shut out the gloom beyond the windows, taking refuge, comfort and great pleasure in small seasonal rites. I light scented candles, brew pots of tea, knead bread dough and stir mugs of hot chocolate, experiment with recipes for curries and paellas, sketch and read. I plot gardens for next year (more roses and herbs, perhaps a Medicine Wheel garden), craft grand and fabulous schemes which will probably never see the light of day. I do a little dancing from time to time, but my efforts are closer to lurching than anything else.

We are nearing the end of November, and in a few weeks, days will begin to lengthen again. It will be some time until we notice a real difference in our daylight hours, but at least we will be on our way, and for that reason, Yule just may be my favorite day in the whole turning year. When the winter solstice arrives, there will be celebrations and silliness to drive away the darkness and welcome old Helios back to the world. He is still here of course - it's the earth's seasonal wobble that makes him seem more distant than he actually is at this time of the year. We and our planet are the ones in motion, not the magnificent star at the center of our universe.

Beginning Sunday night (November 23rd) and continuing until Yule, I will light a candle at dusk every Sunday night in a practice called the Advent Sun Wheel, four weeks and four candles, a fifth festive candle to be lit on the eve of the Winter Solstice. Now in its twentieth year, the observance was crafted by the late Helen Farias, founder of the Beltane Papers. Helen passed beyond the fields we know in 1994, and her creation has been carried on by friends, first by Waverly Fitzgerald and since 2004 by Beth Owls Daughter. Waverly passed beyond the fields we know in December 2019, but she will be with us in spirit as we light our candles. She always is.

In touching match to candlewick, I join a circle of wise women and kindred spirits in far flung places, bright spirits like Beth, Joanna Powell Colbert and many others. I am not so wise myself, but that is quite all right. Together we will honor the earth and her fruitful darkness, and we will welcome the sun home with warm thoughts and healing energies. This has been a difficult year. May there be light ahead for all of us.

One needs only a wreath and five candles to participate in this observance. At sunset this coming Sunday, light the first candle in your wreath and spend a little time in quiet reflection, then blow out the candle when you are done. On the following Sunday at sunset, light the first candle and a second candle too... and so on and so on until the Winter Solstice when the fifth and last candle of the ritual is lit.

Magpie creature that I am and ever a passionate collector of seasonal lore, I am very interested in your own "before Yule" practices.

Thursday Poem - November Song

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks,

hulls, shells, the architecture of trees.

Praise the meadow of dried weeds:

yarrow, goldenrod, chicory, the remains

of summer. Praise the blue sky that hasn't

cracked. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt

of leaves that covers the grass:

Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum, Sugar Maple.

Though darkness gathers, praise our

crazy fallen world; it's all we have,

and it's never enough.

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Crowned

The Merry (Mirrie) Dancers

This morning's post takes its title from an old Scots name for the aurora borealis. Clear, cold winter nights are the best times for watching the grandest light show of them all, also for capturing the Milky Way with a lens. Beau and I have been doing that very thing for years. Several powerful solar flares occurred last week, and the auroras generated by the resulting geomagnetic storms were absolutely breathtaking for a night or two. They lit up the sky and made us feel like dancing too.

Years ago, my soulmate and I were driving along a country road in the Lanark highlands on a cold winter night when a particularly vivid performance of the aurora took place right over our heads. We stopped to watch it, and I have never forgotten the gently shifting curtain of dancing colour in every hue of the rainbow.

In Scotland, the aurorae are often called "the mirrie dancers" in reference to their shifting, shimmering motion in the night sky. The old Scots word "mirrie" means "to tingle, shimmer, or quiver" and probably originates in the Norn language, a descendent of Old Norse spoken in the Orkney and Shetland islands until the middle of the 19th century. The further north one travels, the more dazzling the auroras are, and the northern Scottish islands get some whoppers.  Merry (not mirrie) is a modern mispronunciation of the old adjective, and I like that too. We need all the merriment we can get in this dark time of the year.

There is also another Scots term for the aurora, "Na Fir-chlis" (the Nimble Men"). According to folklore, the nimble ones are combative, outcast faeries who wage a never-ending battle in the night skies above the earth. From down here on the surface, their war games look like dancing lights.

While the most spectacular aurora showings are in places like northern Scotland, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Greenland and Canada's high Arctic, there are times when we don't do too badly in the eastern Ontario highlands either. We call them "the northern lights", and they certainly put on a show last week. 

There is nothing like sky dancers, folklore and etymology to start off a dreary November day. Ditto a good cup of coffee. Winter is here, no doubt about it.

Sequestered, Week 319 (CCXIX)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

The Beech Mother, First Snow

Friday Ramble - Winter

This week's word hails from the Old English winter (plural wintru) meaning "the wet season". That may seem odd, but winter is usually the wettest season of the year. There are a few contenders for the word's Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins, the most popular being the PIE root forms *wend- and *wed- meaning "wet". Other possibilities include the PIE roots *wind- meaning "white", and *gheim- meaning cold. The latter forms part of the words chimera and hibernate, also the name of mightiest mountain range of them all, the Himalayas. Their name combines the Sanskrit words hima (snow) and ālaya (dwelling), thus, "abode of snow".

Whether or not the season involves snow and icy temperatures or just a hatful of rain, most cultures on island earth have a word for it, and it has a singular place in our thoughts, dancing in a stronger light than its other, more moderate kin. Those of us who live in the north tend to predicate our agricultural and culinary activities in spring, summer and autumn on making ready for the long white season.

For the Celts, winter began at Samhain (October 31) and ended on Imbolc (February 1) when springtime arrived. The Winter Solstice on or about December 21 marked the shortest day and longest night of the year, and it was a rowdy celebration of the highest order. From that day onward, the light of the sun would return, a little more every day until the Summer Solstice in June. The legendary King Arthur was believed to have been born on the Winter Solstice, and Druids sometimes refer to the Winter Solstice as Alban Arthuan ("The Light of Arthur").

Rugged northerners that they were, the Norse knew all about winter. They counted their years in winters and thought the world would end after the mightiest winter (the fimbulvetr) of them all. Their beliefs, compiled in the 13th century Icelandic Edda, contain a wealth of oral material from much earlier sources, and the collection is the main source of everything we know about Norse literature, beliefs, customs, deities and creation mythologies. One of these days, I will work my way through the Edda again, and the idea of doing it in winter seems appropriate.

It all comes down to cosmic balance. We owe the lineaments of our existence in the Great Round to a tilt in the earth's axis as it spins merrily in space. When winter reigns here in the north, lands south of the equator are cavorting in summer, and I cling to that thought in the depths of frozen January. Somewhere in the world, it is warm and sunny, and sentient creatures are kicking up their heels in the light.

Winter gifts us with the most brilliantly blue skies of the calendar year by day, and the most spectacular stellar expanses by night. There is nothing to compare with the sun shining through frosted trees on morning walks, the sound of falling snow in the woods. The darkness at night is intense, and the stars seem so close one can almost reach up and touch them. Stargazy is the word, and by that I do not mean a Cornish fish pie, although they are lovely! Backyard winter astronomy is bone chilling stuff, but I would not miss it for anything in the great wide world.

When winter beckons, I think about moving further south, but it isn't going to happen. Garden catalogues and canisters of wild bird seed take up residence on every surface in the house. I pile up books and music and tea, stir curries, stews and cauldrons of soup, ponder the ranks of pickles and chutneys in my larder. My boots, skis and snowshoes are trotted out and made ready for treks in the woods. Rambles will be brief this winter (that pesky ice), but I will be taking them for sure, and Beau will be with me every step of the way, clad in one of his natty parkas.

There is clarity and comfort in knowing that long after I am gone, the winter fields and forests of the eastern Ontario highlands will remain, their snows unmarred by the clumsy footprints of this old hen. To know the north woods, one has to wander through them in winter, spend hours tracing the shapes of sleeping trees with eyes and lens, listen to snow falling among them, perhaps become a tree herself.

Thursday Poem - Instructions in Magick

You don’t need candles,
only the small slim flame in yourself,
the unrevealed passion
that drives you to rise on winter mornings
remembering summer nights.

You don’t need incense,
only the lingering fragrance
of the life that has gone before,
stew cooking on an open fire,
the good stars, the clean breeze,
the warmth of animals breathing in the dark.

You don’t need a cauldron,
only your woman’s body,
where so many of men’s fine ideas
are translated into life.

You don’t need a wand, hazelwood or oak,
only to follow the subtle and impish
leafy green fellow
who beckons you into the forest,
the one who goes dancing
and playing his flute
through imperial trees.

And you don’t need the salt of earth.
You will taste that soon enough.

These things are the trappings,
the tortoise shell, the wolf skin,

the blazoned shield.
It’s what’s inside, the star of becoming.
With that ablaze, you have everything

you need to conjure up new worlds.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things
(Reprinted with my late friend's permission. It is probably my favourite)

Wordless Wednesday - The Trail